‘Nollywood could have been money-spinner but barely gets govt support’

Oris Aigbokhaevbolo is a writer and film critic, known in media circles for his film and pop music reviews. His writing career began in his final year of Pharmacy school at the University of Benin and his first major recognition as a writer and film critic came in 2014, when he was selected to participate at film writing programmes for young critics.  Recently named an international voter for the 2024 Golden Globes, he tells TOBI AWODIPE what this means not just for him but also young Nigerian and African filmmakers as well as the continent.

Being a movie critic isn’t all that popular here; how did you find yourself doing this?
It was just my rotten luck. I was watching the Kanye West video Can’t tell Me Nothing when I was an undergraduate and thinking that for an artist that great, he would never really be reviewed well if he was a Nigerian. The thought came because I was reading a lot of reviews from Time magazine especially. I said to myself and maybe my friend who was there that day that I would love to be the guy who review stuff like that when I finished from school. I finished and started writing about film and music and books. Almost immediately, I was selected to attend three major film-writing programmes in South Africa, Germany and the Netherlands. Imagine that for a boy who grew up with a magazine-loving mother in a small house with a shared external toilet in Lokoja. That gave me a lot of confidence and when I got a job working on a project supported by the German Culture Centre (Goethe Institut), I found that I could support myself financially. Then I won the AFRIMA award for entertainment journalism. So, I had some money and acclaim within two years of moving to Lagos. As Kanye said, you couldn’t tell me nothing. I was young so I felt that there would only be good times. This is the succinct version, I have written the longer version in my collection of essays and reviews to be published later this year.

You say you started writing even when you were in pharmacy school. What happened to that degree?
The certificate is somewhere on my shelf, so, it still exists. I just haven’t used it to make a living since concluding my NYSC programme. But I won’t have to Google too much to tell you the difference between pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. I may need some help to balance complex chemical equations though and if you tell me you will not complete the recommended course for an antibiotic, I’ll be alarmed. Those things never really leave you even if the certificate gathers dust.

Having attended film festivals all over the world, what would you say are the major things our movies lack?
Maybe there just isn’t a lot of excellence in many directions. I was judging entries for a programme at an international festival recently and the guys from elsewhere on the continent had such great imagination as I could see from the diversity of plots and stories. That multiplicity in quality is the main thing I’d like to see.

Do you think our movies get the recognition and prestige they deserve?
I think Nollywood gets exactly what it deserves. The tenacity of the filmmakers is well recognized but the shabbiness is announced also. And when the industry does a fine film, people like me say so. Of course, there are certain pictures one wants to do well so people know that Nollywood like everything else is getting better. But I don’t think the Nigerian film industry should complain too loudly, even if those quality-focused filmmakers can indeed address their lack of attention. I’ll have to add that they can at least get a bit better with their marketing and PR.

You were recently named an international voter for next year’s Golden Globes. How does this make you feel and what does it mean for your work going forward?
I am a big fan of awards. I remember visiting my uncle many years ago while he was a student in Ekpoma and at night we went looking for cable TV just so I could watch the Grammys. I think that was the year Avril Lavigne had many nominations. At another point, I went to stay with a colleague overnight to watch another award ceremony. He had to put on his electricity generator around 2 a.m. Time difference doesn’t matter when you’re obsessed with things like this. In my final year of studying pharmacy in University of Benin, I was refreshing the New York Times website to follow their live text coverage of the Oscars. I say all of this to help you understand my lifelong fascination with things like this. Do I need to tell you how it feels to be able to contribute to something as storied as the Golden Globes, though it has had its own share of controversies? As for what it means for my work, I don’t think it affects anything much. I will write as I do and review films as I do. We are told to act appropriately on social media but that has never been a problem for me.

What more can stakeholders do to see our movies compete globally or is it more a case of having more of us judging these things?
Our filmmakers will just have to get better and closer to the global ideal. We have seen filmmakers like Jade Osiberu get major acclaim for her recent work. She released three good projects in one year. That’s huge. These films have an identifiably American DNA in some regard, so one imagines that it will appeal to some people who are not Nigerian. The next phase is for someone to produce something that breaks away from any known tradition, except in smaller details. If such a project gets massive love the world over and we have more films do that again and again, then we can say emphatically that Nollywood has arrived. We are getting there.

Is it possible for our movie industry to develop outside of government support and basically depend on private funding?
That is exactly what Nollywood has been doing. The government has barely supported the industry, which is unfortunate because there really could have been major revenue from there if we had a thoughtful government. Now, we are having more foreign platforms coming in. That’s good money for those who get the opportunities, but who owns the stories really? I have not seen the contracts but if you know about Hollywood arrangements, you’ll suspect that these foreign financiers are in major control. Private funding has done a lot and will keep doing but local private funding can’t compete with international funding. What that would mean, we’ll see soon enough.

What is next for you, what new grounds are you looking to conquer?
There’s more, plenty more. I am working on a tech platform called Twelfstack; it’s for celebrities and those with a lot of followers on social media. I’ll share more, as we get closer to its launch. I am also looking at our media landscape and thinking about what we lack. Anybody will tell you we lack a lot of things but for me, the pressing one is lack of a media platform that is truly on the side of the audience. The old guard is focused on politicians because that’s how they make money. Newer platforms are focused on big companies and industries because that’s how they make their own money. All of these are fine but who caters to the reader? So, I am working on something called Film Efiko. A friend and I launched a literary magazine called Efiko months back. Now, I want to start a film magazine, which will also cover online video content and maybe music videos.

I have seen a few new media platforms scared of reviews. Not us. We will review and we will interview and write features. We’ll try out a subscription business model and if that works, we would have created something especially constructed for the Nigerian and African readers and even for those who are not African but are interested in our entertainment scene. That’s the next stage for me.